possibly a silly question...

<p>i have only been shooting for about 3 years. so not really that long. i have also been blessed with 3 different cameras over the past 3 years, some of them good some not so good. like a p+s fuji fine pix, great in some ways but really hard to handle and kind of grainy looking. my a2 which is amazing and i love every thing about it except the cost but i love the controlability. my 10D which is awesome in some ways but sucks in others. for instance its easy to use, but i hate the small viewfinder, its bad color rendition, having to deal with opening raw files one at a time because my computer doesn't like them and MOSTLY because i dont want to buy a new lens that would give me a wide angle for just this camera when i am not sure that it is going to be around that long. its getting up in years for a digital camera and as much as i try to convince my self that it is going to last i am afraid that it wont be around much longer. so i sit here wondering if it is worth converting wholy to film cause i like my sliides better than the digitall picture i get with the 10D, better color and the A2 is just easier for me to see out of/ use. or do i try and get a digital equivalent of the A2? unfortunately both options cost a fair amount. i dont mind using film but slides are not very cost effective, prints i have only had so so luck with, and to get a digital with a big veiwfinder, and one that delivers as good of color as my slides plus a wide angle lens ( or a digital with a full frame sensor). is going to cost quite a bit more than i am willing to put out. film is also slowly going away though so... ( lastly it is also starting to get more appealing to do my own printing and processing but... )<br>

and lastly some times i think i could save a lot of trouble by going to something like a G10, it doesn't seem to fit any of my current desires except it would last, be somewhat affordable, and i could carry it every where so all the pictures i take for the heck of it wouldn't cost me anything really and i can shoot the expensive film stuff for stuff i really want. ohh and it has a 28-140 mm eqivalent lens, which is nice.<br>

so does any one else have any advice on going all film, getting an old eos 1ds (the original), or getting a 30 or 40D + 17-40 f4 or 17-50 f2.8 tamron. or do i just give in to the old p+s option.</p>

<p>I'd learn how to shoot RAW and learn how to use DPP to process the images. There's really nothing much wrong with the 10D as far as color goes. The viewfinder is a bit small, but that doesn't affect your images.</p>

<p>The old EF-S 18-55 kit lens can very easily be modified to fit a 10D. That's your low cost route to a wideangle on the 10D. Get a used one off eBay and modify it. See <a href="http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/efs-10d.html">http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/efs-10d.html</a> for instructions.</p>

<p>I'm not sure what "...having to deal with opening raw files one at a time because my computer doesn't like them..." means. Try getting to know DPP. <a href="http://www.usa.canon.com/content/dpp2/index.html">http://www.usa.canon.com/content/dpp2/index.html</a></p>

<p>Depends on your workflow and what you are trying to archieve. For a digital workflow a digital camera is best. Scanning film (especially slide film) takes time, skill and expensive equipment if you want to do it right. Better work on your digital photography -- you can easily get much better pictures with a dSLR than with scanned 35mm film. You need some practice and experience to set the correct options, custom parameters and things like white balance and exposure compensation in different situations, but after you've learned this, getting great images should not be a problem. Shoot small JPEGs plus RAW. You will only need the RAW files if you want the best possible picture quality for printing large or serious post-processing, else the smaller files will be sufficient for most applications (and quick file browsing).</p>

<p>If you work with analog media (especially b+w film or slide projection), shooting film is the easiest way with all its natural advantages (dynamic range, hardcopy backup...). Maybe you should consider moving to medium format, as this will vastly improve image quality (if your applications allow this).</p>

<p>There is nothing really wrong with getting a small high-end digicam, as it allows you to take pictures when you left your "real" camera at home or when the better handholdability and smaller size/inconspicuousness is a plus.</p>

<p>Good Lord! What a question.<br>

You like your slides better than digital. How are you viewing or sharing your slides? Do you scan them and convert them to a digital image? Do you get prints done or do you project them?<br>

What you have before you is a decision only you can make. Before you do it, you should find a friend or relative who has a newer, more professional camera and try it out.<br>

For me, the final test is what kind of print can I produce. Recently I printed a 17"x25" copy of a 35mm negative from a Contax G2 camera with a Zeiss lens scanned on a very good scanner and because it was from 100 ISO film, it was practically grainless. I can safely say that once you are 12 megapixels or more on a larger sensor camera like one of the 1Ds versions or the 5D series, you can expect to equal what the best negative can do--within reason.<br>

Due to the characteristics of film and the dumbness of some scratch and spot software, I still had to spend a good deal of time editing out spots and dust specks from the digitized image.<br>

There's work to be done on both sides of the equation.<br>

The size of the sensor makes the difference. Instead of looking at an old 1D, which is a fine camera but will fall short of what you seem to want, try an used 5D which you might find for under $900 these days.</p>

<p>Get a better computer and/or a better photo editing program.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>i use photoshop elements 6 with my computer. the problem is the photo shop organizer or what ever seems to shut down when you are trying to look at your pictures for more than a couple seconds in that particular viewer. so you have to open all th raw files one at a time to veiw them. very irritating.<br>

as far as the in camera settings.. while i can see that doing custum everything and manual everything is great... i dont really have time to sit around and waste usually with making sure that i have the right white balance in camera so i put it on auto, unfortunately it usually is not really that good. at least in my opinion. a friend of mine has a 1d mk 2 that i have used and i have to say that on auto white balence that camera is spot on and it also delivers that quality i love. cant even come close to buying one though. but film tends to deliver what i want usually. just paying like 20+ dollars for 36 exposures is a bit on the pricy side. so i totally agree digital is a lot eaier.<br>

i may be wrong about the viewfinder, maybe its just my own personal thing but i tend to like the bigger view finders i think i do a better job of paying attention to whats in my frame that way. i do alright with the 10D but i definitely like the A2 bettter in this instance, i love the medium format even more but i dont own one so i am only talking from a one time experience.<br>

do people really set the white balance manualy while they are out all shooting? i tend to shoot manual exposure but. what other settings and things would you recomend for the camera/ operation</p>

 

<p>If you want to keep shooting 35mm film, and dont mind taking your rolls to someplace like RITE AID drugstore, you can always elect to have them make a PICTURE CD along with the prints (I dont know if RITE AID still processes slides). They will charge you an extra $2-3 for the PICTURE CD, and will load it with a hi-res JPEG FILES, one for each exposure on your roll. Going this route saves you from having to worry about scanning the negatives or prints yourself at some point in the future. The JPEG file format is a standard picture file format, its been around a long time, and so many graphic file editors can easily load, view, edit, and print this format.<br>

At RITE AID, you can also elect to have the film sent out to regional FUJI processing labs. And again, you can elect to have them make a Picture CD along with the prints. It just takes a week or so to get the pictures back. Right now, the cost to process (1) roll of 24 EXP color print film, like FUJI SUPERIA ISO 800, get a single set of prints AND a Picture CD is about $11, and RITE AID sometimes runs a special, which drops the price to about $8.</p>

 

<p>i actually havent seen a rite aid down here yet.. i do occasionally take my print film to walgreens though. they are hit or miss on their quality. sometimes i am really impressed and other times i am not happy with it at all. but the approach you suggest is good alan. i actually dont mind it at all. walgreens is a bit cheaper. i think the last time i was there they only charged like 6 dollars for a 36 ex roll of realla 100. it came out pretty well. thier scans are far from great in some ways though. they offer a print of 4x6 at 72 dpi or something so they are not really good for much other than amusement. which is what i take most of my pictures for anyway. but i would still like to make good sized nice prints out of some of them some day.<br>

i send slides to dwayne's cause they seem to be the only ones that offer a reasonable scan and process cost and i usually get my stuff back with in week. they also still do k14 for kodachrome so that is really nice since i still have 5 rolls in the fridge that i want to get used before no one can process it any more.</p>

 

<p>I agree with using Canon Digital Photo Professional. I used it and also use the freeware FastStone Viewer - good for quick viewing RAW images and has editing and conversion ability. Canon DPP and Faststone both have batch convert. The beauty of RAW is the ability to make changes in white balance, etc. - much more control than a JPEG.</p>

 

<p>+1 for the DPP software. </p>

<p>DPP is very handy... a plus mark for my vote as well (even though I am now pretty well plugged in to Photoshop CS4). DPP will batch process nicely.</p>

<p>The 10D is a fine camera with very good color.</p><P>

<p>RAW files need processing. Not just demosaicing - you need to work contrast and saturation. Without processing the colors come out flat. I suggest picking up a copy of Photoshop Elements. If you don't want to bother with this, have the camera generate jpegs and crank up the contrast and saturation in-camera. I prefer RAW myself but some very experienced photogs (e.g. Ken Rockwell) like to have the camera do the processing.</p><P>

<p>As for crop-factor lenses - just do it. I love my Tamron 17-50. If, at some point down the line, I move to FF I'll just sell, give away, or throw away this lens.  I'll have gotten my $400 worth.  Don't restrict your present photography because of speculations about gear in the future.  You buy lenses and use them, you don't marry them for life.</p>

<p>Hi Jason,</p>

<p>There are no silly questions, just silly answers!</p>

<p>I have to agree with a lot of what's been written in response to your questions already.</p>

<p>I have a 10D that serves as backup to my two 30Ds. It's a very good little camera. It was my first DSLR, bought back shortly after it was introduced and when it was the first DSLR to break the $2000 US price 'barrier' (by one whole dollar!)</p>

<p>If your complaints about it were the many file folders it creates on your CF cards, with only 99 images per file, I'd understand. That was one reason I upgraded. My main reason for going to 30Ds was to be able to shoot RAW+JPEG, but I also appreciated spot metering and somewhat larger LCDs to review histograms and read menu settings. And, the startup/wakeup time of the 10D was always a bit sluggish.</p>

<p>But, other than that, your issues are more to do with you than the camera, I'm sorry to say. You need better and more recent software and better workflow with calibration to get great color out of your 10D. It's perfectly capable of it. In fact, I was always amazed at just how good it was, <em>once I learned to use it! </em> I found it limited in terms of enlargements, shooting RAW the 6MP file and converting to 16 bit TIFFs, it was good for up to about 12x16 images before I started to see much loss of detail. A lot of cropping wasn't possible, either.</p>

<p>'<em>i dont want to buy a new lens that would give me a wide angle for just this camera</em> ' Unfortunately you've got this exactly backwards. Any wide angle lens that's usable on the 10D will be perfectly usable on a 20, 30, 40 or 50D, and quite likely any future 1.6X crop sensor camera Canon makes. It's true that the Canon EF-S lenses offered with the later cameras can't be fitted directly to the earlier 10D (without some modifications to the lens' mount). But, third party lenses from Tokina, Sigma and Tamron will fit and work on all of them. And, any Canon EF lens will also work on all of them.</p>

<p>Now, third party '<em>digital only</em> ' lenses won't work on a full frame DSLR, but it's kind of silly to worry about that now, isn't it? You can always sell the lens if/when you ever make that upgrade, which doen't seem very likely for some time to come.</p>

<p>Later cameras have improved viewfinders to some limited degree. But, all 1.6X (Canon, 1.5X and 1.7X in other brands) have somewhat tight viewfinders. It's just the nature of the smaller image sensor, smaller mirror and smaller display in the viewfinder. It's made all of us more dependent upon auto focus, and it exaggerates depth of field a bit. But, these are things we can get used to and learn to work with. You'd probably dislike your A2's viewfinder, too, if you were accustomed to using a medium format or large format cameras.</p>

<p>At least the 10D has a true pentaprism, which makes it reasonably bright. The Rebel series use a penta-mirror, and aren't quite as bright as the xxD seriese viewfinders.</p>

<p>Perhaps the most important point I can make, though, is that if you haven't learned to get the best out of images with your 10D yet, then it's very unlikely any 'upgrade' camera you buy will actually do any better for you. You'll have to learn the same things... setting custom white balances, shooting RAW, doing your post processing on a calibrated computer system with more up to date software (Canon DPP is pretty good, and upgrades are free... But, it's not all that great at batch processing which is why I use Photoshop CS2, Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw presently, but there are many good programs for these purposes such as Lightroom, Aperture, DxO, Phase One, Bibble, etc., etc.) and making your prints under carefully controlled conditions with proper ICC profiles for the printer/paper/ink combos you choose. Take a class in</p>

<p>If there is one thing I would suggest strongly it is to <strong>get some books on RAW file workflow</strong> , read them thoroughly and learn how to wring the best out of your camera. This, some software updates and calibrating your computer and printing will surprise you just how capable the 10D really is.</p>

<p>All these are also very necessary if you want to mix film with digital, by scanning slides or negs and then working with them digitally.</p>

<p>One thing, with film and local processing, you are entirely at the mercy of whoever is running the machine at the time. They could be experienced, well trained and good, but will always still give their interpretation to your images when they make the prints (whether from slides or from negs). Setting up your own workflow and doing it yourself, you are in complete control. As you get more experienced and develop your own eye for things, you'll be able to produce images exactly the way you want them, as you remember the original scene or perhaps your interpretation of it.</p>

<p>If you really wanted to do so, there's no reason not to keep shooting film. Films today are better than they have ever been, and scanning opens up all kinds of new opportunities. Yes, there's an ongoing cost of film and processing. But, that's partially offset by the higher, initial purchase price of a DSLR and compact flash cards and hard drives and DVDs to safely store the digital image files on. There's always a cost to do photography, whether it be digtal <em>or</em> film.</p>

<p>Hopefully you can get more comfortable with the 10D and learn more about it's capablilities. I'd try to do that before I'd serioiusly consider 'upgrading' to any other digital camera, personally, because you'll quite likely run into the same problems again.</p>

<p>But, digital just might not be 'right' for you... Maybe film is more comfortable for you.... Nothing wrong with that at all, either.</p>

<p>Ain't it great to have so many choices?</p>